August 14, 2018 – Make way for a new food truck rolling out on the streets of Santa Cruz next week. With an Asian-Mexican fusion menu, Union Foodie Truck is a dream-come-true for owner Rachel Thompson—a former culinary school instructor and longtime chef at The Buttery café.
“Growing up, my family was all about food,” Thompson says. “It is a family of artists, but it took me awhile to realize that food is my form of self-expression.” She trained in the Cabrillo Culinary Arts program and ended up opening the Corner Café at The Buttery, designing the menu and putting in 15-hour days in the kitchen.
Later she worked for the Professional Culinary Institute (now the International Culinary Center) in Campbell, where she started out giving cooking demos at local high schools and rose to the position of vice president.
Thompson says she has wanted to operate a food truck of her own for years and made a trip to Oregon to study the food truck scene there. She’s enthusiastic about her converted bread truck/kitchen, even though it measures only 20 feet long by 8 feet wide.
The opening menu is a union of Asian and Mexican flavors, hence the name of the business, which also reflects her values and some of the goals of the business. “It represents bringing people together and a way of being good not just to the public, but also to my employees,” she says.
Food will include Vietnamese-style street tacos with a choice of fillings—stir-fried beef, pork belly, shredded chicken or marinated tofu—and homemade corn tortillas. The truck with debut Tuesday, August 21 at the Taco Tuesday event at the Felton Covered Bridge and an official Grand Opening is set for September 1 at Venus Spirits.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
